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EU: The Hague Programme—Justice and Home Affairs (EUC Report)

My Lords, my contribution to this debate will be focused on the excellent report introduced by my noble friend Lord   Wright of Richmond on the EU’s response to terrorism after Madrid. The subject is an important one. The horrendous events in Madrid in March 2004 brought home to everyone, if that were needed, the extent to which we are all in the front line of the fight against terrorism and the willingness also of the terrorists to target large numbers of completely innocent civilians in the pursuit of their objectives. As in the months after Madrid, the tentacles of the plotting of those events were revealed, stretching out to other countries in the European Union and beyond. That also brought home the need to co-operate internationally much more closely and effectively than we have ever done in the past if we are to have any hope of preventing other such outrages in the future. International co-operation against terrorism is still in its infancy. Not so long ago, as recently as the 1990s, there was a tendency in many countries, from which this country was not exempt, to regard people plotting against foreign regimes as none of our business. That insouciance, which was, in my view, always pretty irresponsible, perished on 11 September in New York. Now co-operation is under way at a whole number of different levels: globally through the United Nations, regionally in Europe through the European Union and   bilaterally and plurilaterally between different intelligence and enforcement agencies. All those forms of co-operation are needed—they are not alternatives, one or the other—but it is essential to avoid duplication and confusion and to beware of the irresistible bureaucratic tendency towards turf fighting. This report brings out those points very effectively. The need to dovetail efforts at national, EU and global levels is by no means special to the fight against terrorism. The same challenges arise when dealing with the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or with responding to threats from environmental degradation. It is a pity that the sharpness of the debate in this country on EU matters sometimes obscures the need for a complex multi-layered approach of this kind. Thus the argument that operational co-operation against terrorists should not, as a general rule, be channelled through formal EU machinery—a view put forward in this report and one which I share—should not be pursued as a question of political choice, but rather one of effectiveness and security. There is, in any case, a great deal that the EU machinery and its able co-ordinator Mr de Vries can and should do to strength our mutual co-operation without getting too far into operational matters, and much of it is set out in this report. It would be very helpful if the Minister, in replying to the debate, could tell the House how the incoming British EU presidency intends to carry matters forward in this area over the next six months following the decisions of the European Council before the weekend, how it intends to put flesh on the bare bones of the action plans that were agreed after New York and Madrid, and what are its objectives for this immediate period. One aspect of the EU’s role not much referred to in this report, but which deserves some attention, is its capacity to push matters forward at a global level at the United Nations. The EU and its member states are important players at the UN and key supporters of the UN Secretary-General’s reform programme set out in his paper entitled, In Larger Freedom. Two important proposals on terrorism will, therefore, be up for decision at the mid-September UN summit in New York at which the Prime Minister will be speaking on behalf of the European Union as well as on behalf of the United Kingdom. The first of those is the comprehensive strategy against terrorism which Kofi Annan first put forward in his speech last March in Madrid. The strategy consists of five elements: dissuading individuals from resorting to terrorism; denying terrorists access to funds, to weapons and to the ability to move about freely; deterring states from supporting terrorism in any form; developing state capacity to fight terrorism; and defending human rights from excessive encroachment. That strategy, which addresses the causes of terrorism as well as its symptoms, seems to me to be one that could be endorsed by all participants at the September summit and most particularly by the members of the European Union. The second important proposal is to fill the gap in the existing international conventions against terrorism by accepting a binding commitment to outlaw any acts targeting innocent civilians and non-combatants. For far too long the debate at the UN has been bogged down in a discreditable wrangle over definitions. It is surely now high time to break out of this deadlock and to make it clear, beyond peradventure, that no cause, however laudable in itself, justifies actions such as suicide bombing. The need to fill that gap is as much a political need as it is a legal one. If the UN were now able to turn its face definitively and unambiguously against such practices, it could advance the cause of finding solutions to some of the world’s most intractable disputes, for example, in Palestine and Kashmir. It would be most helpful if the Minister in reply could say how the United Kingdom, as holder of the EU presidency, intends to deploy the EU’s considerable influence in the period between now and the September summit to achieve decisions on those two proposals. I conclude with a more general point about the EU as I shall, unfortunately, not be able to participate in tomorrow’s general debate. The European Union is going through a particularly rough patch just now, but just because the EU has hit some serious internal difficulties does not mean that the rest of the world is standing still, waiting for us to resolve them, as I believe we will. Nor does it mean that we can afford to let our wider interests go by default in the meanwhile. It is surely particularly important at this juncture to pursue vigorously those aspects of foreign policy on which we agree and on which we share common cause. The fight against terrorism is prominent among such matters.